green_martha

It looks like I'm finally able again to do some late night sewing, yay ! It feels good.
I am slowly redoing my fantasy/winter-woodland-stroll garb. The cape has been redone since December (I still need to take pictures of it), now it's onto my franken-surcot. It was too tight across the butt, and the cotton bias binding was hideous. Oh, and it hanged asymmetrically, too. All seams have been cut of, and I'm zigzagging it back into shape. The stitches almost disappear in the thick wool felt, and a little bit of steaming makes the added bulk at the seam lines almost unnoticeable.
I'm just waiting for the (still unfinished) curtains to get out of the dryer so that I can iron them into submission. I'm pretty sure I won't get them all done tonight, but it's no big deal. The room is tidy and feels good for me to work in. And the extra rolling dessert tray has reached its final destination so I have cutting room on the floor again !

Yesterday I got a call from a very talented lady (you know who you are) asking for fabric advice for a stop-motion puppet. And this is half a million levels of cool, at least.
Today, another very talented lady tempted me with a perfect outfit for Vizille, but I will be strong and tell her to make it instead. I know, I'm evil... Mwahahah !

I'm still taking my time with sewing, working slowly, I have a lot of graphic projects simultaneously in the works.( Here be pictures and babbling, but not of any textile nature, skip if you're not interested )

I though I could complete the commission skirt quickly, but what happened is that I decided to try and challenge myself some more with it. So I'm matching the pattern on the tweed, working by hand a lot, and I plan to add some fancy tricks ere and there. But in the end, my client will have a better garment and I'll have better pictures for my portfolio. I totally blame the book Couture Techniques for this sudden surge of perfectionism. Things are going pretty slowly but I managed to make steady progress while taking care of the kids and the house. Right now one kid is happily chirping in her stroller, while the big boy is running around and playing with rocks. Yes, I'm taking advantage of my netbook to type this in advance. Too bad the wifi from the nearby building is too weak for me to post right away. :D
I am also contemplating starting yet another blog like I didn't have enough projects on my plae already. I have been daydreaming about maintaining a cooking blog for a while. Not too fancy recipes, but simple, tasteful things, starting with fresh products. That would challenge the translating nut inside me (cooking is not an area where I find my words in English as easily as say... sewing) and I would keep track of the recipes I know. I have a tendency to make a recipe for a while and then completely forget about it, which is a shame. I haven't done a banana-chocolate tart in years.
So, would anyone be interested ?

Yesterday Murphy tried jumping over the railing at the top of the stairs. That wasn't a good idea as he can't see where he's going. He knocked a lamp down (one that was hooked to the wall over a big mirror), the lightbulb exploded, but thankfully the cat is unharmed. *shakes head*
This morning I got a kind of weird email. I think someone confused me with someone else - but it still made me happy as it offered some information I'll be sure to keep in my head for someday, later. I have the feeling life is throwing lemons at me as a very unsubtle hint that I should make some lemonade. :) Lots of ideas about my business project(s), and I managed to get some structural work done on the website as well.
And now, I noticed I must have been on crack when I scanned the La Mode magazines, because I put them all together in the 1913 folder while more than half of them date from 1914. I need to correct that while I'm editing the nodes.
I started mocking up the sleeve for my 1895-6 blouse, happily using jenthompson's work as a starting point. It's not bad, but not perfect either. I need to research what the innards of those gigantic sleeves looked like. Right now my gigot is a bit floppy. The stiffer taffetas will help some, but I suspect they did have a few other tricks back then...

That's a picture of last week's plunder. The beige thing underneath isn't a table, it's my new (sadly unbound) 1886 Mode Illustrée. Sadly it has been hit right in the middle where the pages used to be folded and they now tear veeeery easily there - but overall it's in good shape. I lost the teens books I was bidding on. *pouts* Mode Illustrée books from after 1900 don't seem to pop up as often as the bustle era ones on eBay but, oh well, you can't win them all, right ?
Besides, I just ordered Queen Maud's Wardrobe for half the retail price, and the new What Clothes Reveal. And a whole stack of children books for Heimlich. Like a BIG pile. I blame the book we haven't been able to hide from him yet that his Grandma (guess which side...) gave him for Christmas : ugly images, text is dumb as a brick and full of typos. It's now hidden behind a lot of more interesting stuff, with the shiny (yeah, metallic shiny !) turned to the wall.
Justaucorps status : it needs the front buttons and half a buttonhole sewn over. The interfacing (white, as I didn't have anything in a dark color) showed through the machine-made buttonholes after I had opened them. I tried recovering them with the machine. Bad idea #1. Then I went for handsewing and buttonhole thread. Bad idea #2. I don't know whether it's the thread that's just bad or if it's a combination of thread and fabric thickness. So I had to make do with the same sewing thread I used with the machine and hand-sewing. It may sound like a cardinal sin but it works. Except for the part where I keep jamming the eye of the needle into the flesh of my thumb, because the wool + interfacing are pretty thick and tightly woven and the needle slips from the thimble. Right into my thumb. But I'm almost done, I even managed to make steady progress over the last couple of days despite Toad only sleeping for 20 minutes on one afternoon and her being übercranky for most of the day yesterday. (I guess she just used up both kids crankiness potential for a while because they've been adorable today)
I decided to take some rest this week, so the children will be with Nounou on all weekdays. January has just been exhausting, both physically and mentally, so I'm taking advantage of our wonderful and helpful sitter. And maybe I'll be able to work a little bit for myself, like on a set-up to take better pictures of my costumes, or even on some sewing if I get to finish my next commission quickly enough.

When I type "Costume Close-up" into Google (I wasn't sure about the title, I often mix up different books' content), the first link that pops up is this. It made me smile :)

Well, I've been feeling a bit under the weather, and I just realized the dizziness from those past few days might be related to some medicine I'm taking. Grrrreat... My head finally cleared around 8PM and I took it this morning around 5 I'd say...
In short : I've been away at my parents' place for a week, we went to the seashore with the kids, I'm making slow but steady progress on the pirate justaucorps (one half of the body is fully lined, the second half isn't too far behind, and I have fabric for the sleeves lining), I embroidered a few handkerchiefs, I made green jam (rhubarb-apple, with green sugar left over from our wedding). We adopted Lord Darkstone's blind cat.
Lord Darkstone adopted Murphy, a stray kitten, years ago, while he was still living at his parents' place. At that time, Murphy already had some kind of disease or infection that made him lose his sight little by little, so that when Lord Darkstone moved out and in with Lady Darkstone, the cat was fully blind. But he knew his environment, so the Darkstones considered it wiser to let the him live with Lord Darkstone's parents. Enter a few family complications, basically, the cat's caretaker got kicked out of the house and the one family member who now occupies the house threatened to have the cat killed unless Lord Darkstone took it home. Except the Darkstones live in a three-rooms-apartment with two cats already, so we volunteered, hoping that moving the poor animal wouldn't be too traumatizing. Thankfully, Murphy is adapting extremely well. He's probably the nicest cat I've ever met, I just don't understand someone might want to get rid of him. Mind you, the ... person who kicked him out kept a dog AND another cat, it's not an allergy thing, he just stated he couldn't stand Murphy. Charming person. Can't stand cuddles, apparently.

Yeah, I've been bad at updating lately. I know, I know... The kids are keeping me kinda busy, particularly last week when the home geek was abroad (because people at his job can't plan work properly and had to send him to England to fix things he said would need to be fixed weeks before, gaaaaah !).

I'm still behind on the rococo event pictures, but I can alredy show you the finished Directoire outfit.

Yup, it's comfy. So comfy in fact that I have plans to duplicate the bodiced skirt as a woollen jumper dress for the winter. I ended up wearing it over my chemise and regular rococo petticoat. More pictures by clicking the images, here and at Heileen's.

I'm not inspired by the justaucorps. It's not playing along nicely, there are some semi-wrinkly places that I don't know how to fix so I'm just ignoring it right now.

I have finished a plain boring t-shirt for my Mom, nothing really fancy, but that means one commission out of the way - I know she wants some more stuff, we'll see to that when I visit my parents in two weeks, I hope I'll be able to fund some fabric with that.

I don't have any specific historical projects in mind yet - I do have some longterm goals but I give myself some time to think about it, plan them and all that jazz. Right now I'm focusing on modern sewing as 1) I need to make some sample stuff to put in my portfolio on my site and 2) I started the Great Winter Wardrobe Overhaul. Starting with remaking the green cape I made like ten years ago. You don't even want to know how I made that, eeeek !

Muuuuch better now. I hacked off the center font edges and the top part, put lots of darts at the top to make it fit over my shoulders, redid the hand slits (still need to resew those closed). I want to shorten and reham it, put in a new collar band and make the hood smaller. I'll probably quilt some of the front part as weel, just for fun.

The week-end was seriously good, exhausting, but wonderful. Seeing so many friends again. Relaxing in the sun. Lounging by the pool (and splashing into it, actually).
I did not get as much sewing done as I could have (quite unsurprisingly), but both sleeves are in, with the insides neatly finished. I made three strips of fringed trim and added some to one half of the neckline already. I patterned and cut out the peplum, traced the quilting desing onto it, quilted the flowers and vines and started the diamond pattern. So basically, the jacket is comign along nicely. I have to finish the neckline, the front opening (eyelets...), the sleeves opening (including making buttons), the quilting on the peplum, add trim to said peplum and put it together with the rest of the jacket. That's still quite a lot of work, and a good bit ot handsewing. I'm taking pictures at every step, but posting them with the little one around isn't that easy. And I used his nap today to finish the design for Toadette's birth announcement rather than updating the website.
Lookign at the clock, I should get down and get make us something to eat tonight... The cupboards and fridge are a bit empty, it's going to take some imagination to come up with something else than pasta...

I'm totally unsure whether I want the skeleton suit to be long or short-sleeved. The first examples I saw were long-sleeved, and so is my mock-up (did I mention : hey, it fits quite pefectly !). Buuuut the boy does NOT like being too hot, and it will be worn in the peak of summer. And now it seems the whole universe is sending me reference pictures for short-sleeved suits. I'm torn ! Both are so cute, and the long sleeves would act as a good sun protection... What a dilemna !

A 1864-65 Mod eIllustrée book arrived at our doorstep today (might be related to me bidding on it, right ?) and it's GORGEOUS. I might want a crinoline now... :)